SILVER AND A BIT OF BLUE

Silver: Some songs about silver here and a bit more background on blue as in that great song Blue Smoke.

Teressa Brewer - By the light of the silver moon
Billie Joe Spiers - Queen of the Silver dollar
Steve Conway - Look for the silver lining


Blue: As in Blue Smoke which I featured at the very start of this blog way back when??. Actually 18 January this year - when I started this blog - so not so long ago.
Recorded 3/10/48 - Processed 23/2/49 - although these dates can be disputed.

Jim Carter, who turns 90 this year, played played the first notes on our first homegrown hit record when he played the slow-waltz introduction to Blue Smoke out of his lap-steel guitar. He opened the song with a variation on Ruru Karaitiana’s simple melody and his final run deftly leads vocalist Pixie Williams into the famous lines:

Blue smoke goes drifting by, into the deep blue sky
And when I think of home I sadly sigh
Oh, I can see you there with tears in your eyes
As we fondly said our last goodbyes
And as I sailed away with a longing to stay
I promised I'd be true and love only you

Blue smoke goes drifting by, into the deep blue sky
My memories of home will never die

It is just such a marvellous song and record - it was the first song Karaitiana had written, the first time Williams had sung professionally, (and she sang skies instead of sky), the first record on the new Tanza (To Aid New Zealand Artists) label and the first commercial recording of a New Zealand song to be manufactured locally.To back up its Kiwi-ness the label design had a bright green and silver label with a tui on top flanked by ferns.

It marked the real birth of our own record industry and was a massive hit. with sales topping 50,000 copies while many others overseas recorded cover versions. The B side had a song called Senorita also written by Ruru Karaitiana.

The band is called the Ruru Karaitiana Quintette, but it was Carter’s Hawaiian band, hired for the session. Others on the session apart from Carter (lap steel guitar) were Gerry Hall (rhythm guitar) George Artridge (ukelele) John McNeeley (double bass) and Noel Robertson also on bass - he was usually a drummer but no drums were required for the record.

It was a DIY production. Some takes of Blue Smoke were allegedly ruined by the noise of a fridge next door, another by Karaitiana himself. “He came in at the end before we’d finished and said, ‘Oh, that’s a good one.’ So that killed that!” said Carter.

I acknowledge some of the information supplied for the above from a brilliant article in the N Z Listener.